The night of soul's betrayal
Alya resigned from her position in the university to "pursue personal projects", which meant, for her, "go study the Pandora Gates". For access to the gates, she took up a job as a gate operator. But the voices in her head, the echoes of her former selves, have other plans. When the shit hits the fan, will she be able to make peace with herselves in time? Or will she be lost forever among the stars? Tune in at 9 for... The Night of Soul's Betrayal "This is a slippery one." He smiled as he realized the unintentional pun. Nathan had been tracking the octomorph for nearly two weeks with barely any leads. A couple nights ago it all changed, though. Reliable sources indicated the target was out of hiding and on the move, and heading straight for a Gate, probably hoping to elude his pursuer in some alien planet. He was a singularity seeker; a very, very dangerous and insidious one, or so Nate's proxy assured him. He knew Firewall would probably make him gatecrash to find this one, so he was very intent on stopping this before that became a necessity. His eyes rolled back as he cracked into the facility's security mainframe, and made it appear as if one of the Operators had issued an emergency lock-down. "I'm sorry about this, uh-" He whispered to himself, as he checked the name on the ID he was temporarily hi-jacking "- Alya." The great alarm horns blared at full volume. The security station's techies looked at each other. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" "Are you seeing a lockdown initiated by someone on the other end of the galaxy?" "Yeah." "So... do we do it?" "Absolutely. Bring out the smart-wolves. But don't actually lock that gate down: if they want it locked, then it best stay open. We have a team out there." "Excellent. The hunt consumes all." "The hunt consumes all." "Hey, someone's trying to lock the gate again..." "Probably the hacker. Swarm the place." Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, Alya looked up from her QE comm. Her order to seal the gate did not go through. This was going to get bad. Real bad. Taking the risk, she activates the gate, goes through to seal it from the other side. ... only to have tentacles around her neck as soon as she steps through. "Nobody move!" yells the bubbly voice of the talking octopus. "I'll kill her if you do!" Nathan, bloody knife in hand, freezes as he realizes the sing-seeker has wrestled his pistol from its holster and is now holding it against the head of a female Gate staff member who just came through the Gate. Holding up the cephalopod's stack on his free hand, he says: "I have what I came for. Calm down, now. There's no need for any of us to escalte this any further." The octopus seems to take a second or two to think, considering his options. He points the gun away from the hostage, and towards the Ego-Hunter, but before he has the chance to take a shot, the Operator untangles herself from his grasp, and grasping onto on of his tentacles, swings him towards an airlock on the far side of the room. Realizing immediatly what is about to happen, Nathan braces for exposure, and grabs onto a nearby wall handle. As Alya activates the air-locks opening mechanisms, the two stare at each other, while the octomorph is sucked to his demise. Afterward, Alya covers for this stranger, saying that she did order both lockdowns, and there was no hack. As the ego hunter is escorted to the exit, she sends to him: "You owe me one."